At the moment, my garden would be better described as a jungle. The small, fenced off area at the back is my soon-to-be veggie garden, if i can stop my fluffy dog from rolling in my garden beds...
After starting a veggie plot at Uni, i was inspired to start clearing a space for one at home. It took a while to get through the tangle of grass and weeds that had grown to waist-height in our old chook pen and weeding is a constant nuisance, with grass seeds germinating everywhere but it's slowly getting there.
I planted tomato, squash, thyme, sweet basil, pumpkin, spinach and bean seeds that i found in our cupboard. Most of the seeds were past the expiry date, so i didn't expect much...
So when i got so many seedlings, i was pretty pleased! I haven't done anything special, just dug up the grass and plonked in the seeds, gave it a water and checked on it a week later.The rest of the backyard has been left to the plants, with vietnamese mint and tomatoes taking over one side, and mum's 'indoor' umbrella plant overgrowing the verandah on the other side.
First one to make a blog post, Cat. =D
ReplyDeleteI haven't tried Sweet Basil, how is it?
I don't know yet, they're just little baby seedlings. I bought Cat Thyme from the nursery on our excursion, though ^_^
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCat, in some ways your 'garden' is how so many back yards used to be - unkempt and undesigned wildernesses of rank lawn! And in a strange way I think it looks great...will you cut it back st some stage?
ReplyDeleteHi Cat, Great backyard! You have so much room compared to most backyards these days. You should try making up some seed bombs and just throwing them around your backyard. (Look them up, you should be able to find a recipe) I have always wanted to hang out a train door and do the same thing along train lines. (They have such potential to become fantastic wildlife corridors and "green" spines of a city). Ps. Bye the way, not much has changed at Monsalvat, although it does now have a cafe in one of the old outbuildings. Good for an afternoon on a nice day! You should visit again.
ReplyDeleteWow what a great space! It is a perfect canvas to test everything out that you have learnt at Uni. Do you have any plans for what you would like to do with the rest of the yard? i once lived in a share house in Coburg with a similar garden, it ended up looking like a tomato forest!
ReplyDeleteFunny you mention train lines, Matt, my backyard just happens to back on to the upfield train line, seed bombing it would be a lot of fun...
ReplyDeleteI haven't really got one solid idea for the backyard, we can't decide if we want to go linear and planned-out or just plant as we go. I've been pretty interested in the medicinal uses of plants for a while, so there will definitely be a garden bed dedicated to those, maybe in a spiral ramp (from Bill Mollison's 'Permaculture Two'), the house across the road is being slowly demolished and we've been collecting the bricks to build a spiral ramp garden bed, we've got a fair few bricks to go, though.
We just pulled out the tomato plant and i can definitely relate to the tomato forest.